McCarthyism and the Crucible

During the era of the 1950’s, at the height of the Cold War, McCarthyism arose as a result of fear of the spread of communism in the United States. McCarthyism, named after Senator Joseph McCarthy, was a term which described the lack of evidence and false accusations used against people who were considered communists. Arthur Miller wrote the Crucible because he wanted to show how the relationship of McCarthyism in the 1950’s and McCarthyism in the witch trials during 1692 because the danger of people who were targeted as witches in the modern era. McCarthyism was during the period of 1950- 1954, where many accused were blacklisted or lost their jobs. Most belonged to the Communist Party. The main point about it is that everyone is equal, there is no single person of small groups of people who rule the others. One cause of the fear of communism was the effect of the Korean War. During the three years of this war, more than 33,000 United States troops in combat were killed. The Korean War had major United States politic effects and brought great change to the United States national security policy during the Cold War. In September 1950, the war had changed drastically after the United Nations forces went about risky attacks behind enemy lines. President Truman made all his mistakes and decisions in order for these effects to come into place. After the outbreak, in 1950, The National Security Council report was approved by Truman which called for “drastic increases in U.S. conventional and nuclear strength and in foreign aid programs.” (Pach, Chester J., Jr.) The Korean War was the first armed confrontation of the Cold War and set the standard for many later conflicts. It created the idea of a proxy war, where the two superpowers would fight in another country, forcing the people in that nation to suffer the bulk of the destruction and death involved in a war between such large nations. The superpowers avoided descending into an all-out war with one another, as well as the mutual use of nuclear weapons. The Korean War impacted the economy of the United States. The cost of the Korean War was less significant than that of World War II, it still changed the structure of the American growth as a result of its financing. (Economic Consequences of War) The Korean War boosted GDP growth through government spending, which in turn constrained investment and consumption. (Economic Consequences of War) While taxes were raised significantly to finance the war, the Federal Reserve followed an anti-inflationary policy. Though there was a large increase in prices at the outset of the war, price and wage controls ultimately stabilized prices by the end of the war.(Rockoff) Consumption and investment continued to grow after the war, but below the trend rate prior to the war. On January 26, 1951, a price freeze was introduced. From the onset of the war to the start of the price freeze, prices increased at a rate of 11.1 percent annually. During the period from the price freeze to the end of price controls, prices rose at rate of 2.1 percent annually.(Rockoff) Overall inflation increased by 5.3 percent.This inflation growth was much lower than that of World War II, during which wholesale prices increased about 70 percent. While money growth was very high and volatile during World War II, averaging 18 percent between 1940 and 1946, the average money growth rate during the Korean War was 4 percent.(Ohanian) In response to this growth in inflation, the government implemented price and wage controls. Increases in taxes and new price and wage controls that constrained private sector consumption and investment affected overall material well-being. In the years after the war, consumption and investment continue to be impacted by war as they did not return to pre-war levels(Economic Consequences of War). The fear of communism led the United States to throw itself into Vietnam, in order to avoid another North Korea. The Korean War brought the United...

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

..."Reasonable doubt" was all that was necessary to accuse and sometimes convict someone of un-American activities in the late 1940's, early 1950's. This period of time was known for McCarthyism--a time of extreme anticommunism, lead by Senator Joseph McCarthy (McCarthyism). The United States pledged to contain the spread of communism globally, as well as locally, and did what it could to keep this promise. Americans began to fear that communism was leaking into the media, government, arts, schools, and other areas. This was called the "Red Scare" (Brinkley). One writer that used this era as a basis for his play, The Crucible, was Arthur Miller. He was able to capture the panic and mere insanity of many Americans in an allegorical way. The "crusade against subversion" played a significant role in the following: the actions and tactics of McCarthy, the reasons why Miller and other artists were targets of McCarthyism, and the relationship of his play The Crucible to the events of the late 1940's to the early 1950's (Brinkley).
Senator Joseph McCarthy used many tactics to persuade Americans to oppose communism and indict those who supported it. Communism had tangible shape, and Americans were worried that people in the U.S. would start leaning to the far left like several other countries such as the USSR and China (Schrecker). In order to prevent this, the Congressional House Un-American Activities Committee...

...Throughout Joseph McCarthy’s accusations of communism there was talk of some of his victims possibly being innocent. One of these victims that was allegedly innocent was Arthur Miller. Miller, because he was wronged by the law, decided to write a similar story to the events of the McCarthy trials in order to make McCarthy’s ideals seem flawed. Miller believed that if he could write a story to prove the accusations incorrect he would be able to re-establish his respectable reputation. This story is known as “The Crucible”, a story about the Salem Witch Trials and how the townspeople were falsely accused of witchcraft, but couldn’t do anything to plead there innocence. Miller managed to show through “The Crucible”, how ridiculous McCarthy’s accusations were and how it was very unfair that many people’s lives were ruined because of this man. Throughout the play “The Crucible”, Arthur Miller tried to show many similarities between both of the trials and they way they were conducted. Miller showed similarities such as inconsistent reasons for accusing people and portrayed himself as the main character known as John Proctor who was a good citizen and only got involved in the whole fiasco to try and fight for justice.
Arthur Miller, born in 1915, grew up in New York to a Jewish family. His mother was a woman’s clothing manufacturer who lost everything due to the poor economy of the 1930’s. Miller knew that with his family’s lack of...

...The American Heritage Dictionary defines McCarthyism as “The political practise of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insignificant regard to evidence.”
Arthur Millers ‘The Crucible’ is an extended metaphor representing the parallels between the Salem witch-hunts and accusations of communism during the McCarthyism era. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in response to the unwarranted persecution of many Americans, who were accused of communist ties or associating with Communist governments. Two of the themes presented throughout The Crucible are Witchcraft and Personal Integrity.
Miller sets up the parallel between The Crucible and McCarthyism by presenting Salem to be a puritan society and a theocracy, which would make the devil and those communing with him enemies of the town. It follows that America, then, is a democracy, which would make communism the modern devil and communists enemies of America.
Witchcraft is the most important theme in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, for it is from the belief in witchcraft that the action of the story is fully displayed. Witchcraft in The Crucible can be interpreted as a parallel of the paranoia about communism that was prevalent during the 1950s. Just as McCarthy considered everything that was un-American to be communist, the Puritan society believed everything that didn’t conform to...

...﻿Holly Gubser
Ms. Wilson
English 11/ Period 3
1 May 2014
McCarthyism and the Crucible
Throughout history there have been many events that are direct parallels of each other. These parallels are evident in Joseph McCarthy’s, McCarthyism and in Arthur Miller’s, the Crucible. McCarthyism was the fear of communism that was created by the Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. This was a time of fear after the Second World War in the years 1950 through 1954. McCarthy had conducted hearings accusing people who were suspected of being related to communism. During these hearings, he forced people to give up names of other “followers” and if they refused to give names of others, they were imprisoned. In Arthur Miller’s, the Crucible it was a based off the Salem Witch Trials. This era had the same tactics of dealing with the supposed followers as McCarthyism, but in this case it was for witchcraft. Many people were accused of witchcraft and put to death for being related to the accusations. The Salem Witch Trials and McCarthyism were both examples of false accusations and public hysteria.
The Crucible and McCarthyism were both fueled by fear. In the onset of the Crucible, Abigail, a woman who was in love with John Proctor, began blaming people of being affiliated with witchcraft and communicating with the devil. She said, “She...

...
WITCHES AND COMMUNISTS
THE RELATION BETWEEN ARTHUR MILLERS’ THE CRUCIBLE AND THE MCCARTHY ERA
By
Dorien Kuipers
S2733943
The Americas la
LAX025P05
10 ECTS
Dr. Tim Jelfs15 October, 2014
551 words
Between February 1692 and May 1693, in several towns in the state of Massachusetts, dozens of people were accused of witchcraft. Nineteen people were sentenced to death by the state government because of all the villagers that accused each other of being possessed by the devil. In contemporary times, these events are generally known as the Salem witch trials. A few hundred years later, in the early 1950’s, author Arthur Miller wrote a play about this part of American history called The Crucible. In this analysis I will argue that The Crucible, a play with hysteria and paranoia as main themes, partly represents the McCarthy Era, in which hundreds of United States inhabitants were accused of being communistic without hard evidence.
After the second World War, the world immediately got caught up in another war that would cover many years: the Cold War. It was a time of military and political tension between the United States capitalists and the Soviet communists. Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953, when Senator Joseph McCarthy accused dozens of people who worked for the US government of being communist infiltrators, without any evidence. The fear he spread among the people from the United States at that time is...

...Anti-Communist oaths when
they worked in the government. If they refused, they were fired.
McCarthyism left its mark on the United States government and its people. If the public
could express their opinions about the government without their fears about being labeled a
Communist, an event such as the Vietnam War may have not taken place. The cultural and
academic life was also affected. T.V. shows were bland and non-threatening, as were movies. The
United States tried to isolate itself from Communism and liberal views. It was not until the 1960's
with the Civil Rights Movement and the full-blown Vietnam War, that the liberal ideas began to
be accepted.
McCarthyism and "The Crucible" have many similarities such as the need for attention.
Senator McCarthy was looking for attention and made accusations about the State Department
having Communist-personnel. There was no proof of this and he never mentioned how many
people were involved. He, however, got media-attention from the story. In "The Crucible", the
girls lied about who they saw with the devil. By lying, they got the attention from Rev. Parris,
Rev. Hale, and, especially, the townspeople.
People react to the fear of the unknown in strange ways. With the McCarthyism, the fear
of Communism made people fearful of anyone with independent ideas, different thoughts, or
anything out of the ordinary. In "The Crucible", the...

...October 2012 Fear Makes People Crazy
Fear can cause people to overreact and lose all rational thinking. The evidence for this statement is found in the Salem witch trials and McCarthyism. The 1692, Abigail Williams and a group of girls turned the town of Salem upside down in a fear driven witch hunt. The girls accused innocent people of being witches in order to avoid getting in trouble for dancing in the woods. Fear of being accused of witchery caused the town’s people to not stand up to the madness. It got so crazy to the point where people were being hanged. Elizabeth Proctor said this. “The Deputy Governor promises hangin’ if they’ll not confess, John. The towns gone wild, I think.”(Miller 162).
In the 1950’s Joseph McCarthy, like Abigail Williams became a witch hunter, He accused people of being communist. He spurred an era of fear called the Red Scare. People were so afraid of communism they believed that their friends and neighbors were communist beyond all reason. They accused innocent people of being communists and they were sent to jail and deported. “A number of accused Communists were sent to Prison or deported and one author estimates that from 10,000 to 12,000 people were ‘blacklisted’ and lost their jobs. Some committed suicide as a result” (Price 16). The Salem witch trials and McCarthyism prove that the best weapon against man is his own fear.
Multiple factors contributed to the increasing hysteria and accusations of...

...In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible the audience is supplied with an array of varying characters. Arthur Miller effectively categorizes the characters of the play into two juxtaposing categories; the accusers, and the accused. The accusers are led by the antagonist of the play, Abigail Williams, whereas the accused are led by the protagonist of the play, John Proctor. The audience sympathizes with John Proctor not only because he has been falsely accused, but also because he is a representation of the human condition. In contrast, Miller causes the audience to despise the accusers in order to exemplify the injustice of McCarthyism.
John Proctor is the primary character in the play that evokes pathos in the audience. Proctor made the infamous mistake of committing adultery and lechery with Abigail. “Abby, I may think of you softly from time to time. But I will cut off my hand before I’ll ever reach for you again” (pg.18). Miller conceals the details and the extent of John and Abigail’s previous relationship, although the audience can clearly see that John is regretful, and Abigail is desperately in love. “And now you bid me tear the light out of my eyes? I will not, I cannot! You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet!” (pg.19). Although lechery and adultery are both sins, Miller presented John in a noble way which allows the audience to sympathize with him. Instead of highlighting the details of Abigail and John’s...